Socio-cultural impacts of tourism: a hosts perspective

There exists a growing body of literature on economic and environmental impacts in developing countries, yet in the area of the effects of tourism on society and culture, the literature is till limited. Furthermore, the little research which has been undertaken which focuses upon developing countries, often assumes a Western perspective. Therefore the purpose of this study was to examine the socio-cultural impacts of tourism in a destination context and from a host perspective. The study touches on areas of employment, gender and development issues, host / guest relationships, tourism as a form of progression, moral issues and economic factors. Interviews revealed that residents who were dependent upon tourism could differentiate between economic benefits and social costs, which were often interactional, and that awareness of negative consequences does not lead to opposition towards further tourism development. More importantly, local residents demonstrated feelings of pride and happiness with regard to both tourism and tourists, pointing out that their cultural interactions and exchanges has improved their knowledge, capability and capacity

Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media

The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia (DEAVUS) are proud to be able to organize the 21st ICA Congress on “Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media”. We are proud to announce that we received over 500 submissions from 56 countries, which makes this Congress the greatest gathering of aestheticians in this region in the last 40 years. The ICA 2019 Belgrade aims to map out contemporary aesthetics practices in a vivid dialogue of aestheticians, philosophers, art theorists, architecture theorists, culture theorists, media theorists, artists, media entrepreneurs, architects, cultural activists and researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. More precisely, the goal is to map the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. The idea is to show, interpret and map the unity and diverseness in aesthetic thought, expression, research, and philosophies on our shared planet. Our goal is to promote a dialogue concerning aesthetics in those parts of the world that have not been involved with the work of the International Association for Aesthetics to this day. Global dialogue, understanding and cooperation are what we aim to achieve. That said, the 21st ICA is the first Congress to highlight the aesthetic issues of marginalised regions that have not been fully involved in the work of the IAA. This will be accomplished, among others, via thematic round tables discussing contemporary aesthetics in East Africa and South America. Today, aesthetics is recognized as an important philosophical, theoretical and even scientific discipline that aims at interpreting the complexity of phenomena in our contemporary world. People rather talk about possible worlds or possible aesthetic regimes rather than a unique and consistent philosophical, scientific or theoretical discipline

Multiobjective Optimization of Low Impact Development Stormwater Controls Under Climate Change Conditions

A coupled optimization-simulation model was developed by linking the U.S. EPA Stormwater Management Model (SWMM) to the Borg Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm (Borg MOEA). The coupled model is capable of performing multiobjective optimization which use SWMM simulations as a tool to evaluate potential solutions to the optimization problem. For this research, the optimization-simulation tool was used to evaluate low impact development (LID) stormwater controls. LID is becoming increasingly prevalent as a climate change adaptation strategy. A SWMM model was developed, calibrated, and validated for a sewershed in Windsor, Ontario. LID stormwater controls were tested under both historical and climate change conditions. LID implementation strategies were optimized using the optimization-simulation model for 30 different scenarios with the objectives of minimizing peak flow in the stormsewers, reducing total runoff, and minimizing cost. The results of these simulations provided important information on the cost-effectiveness information for the LID controls